Until the advent of cable television and then the Internet, Latin Americans, creators and consumers alike, were often more aware of trends in Europe and the United States than in nations neighboring theirs: Whatever similarities in style that emerged regionally were largely the result of discrete, parallel responses to the challenges of urbanization, poverty and the need to somehow integrate modernity and tradition.
— The New York Times

Midcentury architecture and design from the Latin America region seems to be a trend in recent exhibitions in MoMA, MAD, and Americas Society in New York. New York Times writer Larry Rohter compares and contrasts the exhibitions, which shed light on the all-too-familiar tension of integrating... View full entry »

In conjunction with the symposium, "Test Sites: Experiments in the History of Space", the California College of the Arts (CCA) Architecture Division will stage the first exhibition devoted exclusively to the recent works of artisans and historians who harness scents, essences and fragrances in the reconstruction and preservation of historical spaces — An Olfactory Archive.
— California College of the Arts

Probably the most under-appreciated sense in the experiential toolbox (unless you count proprioception), smell is often maligned by aesthetic criticism as too ephemeral, too fleeting, to substantiate anything meaningful. But what if it opened the nostrils and minds of the sniffers to imagine... View full entry »